The Comfort Zone

Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash

A long psychotic episode is so terrifying that, when you find some relief, you grab hold of it with a will and tenacity that will not release. And then you lose most of your reasons for living.

My terror at going out, my fear of social interaction that grips me when the disease is assertive, make me wonder if retreat into safety is the worst result of successfully managed bipolar disorder. Mania drives us to creative highs and sensual stimulations, yet ends with a crash into pain and surrender so great that to face the disease with cowardice, to run away and sacrifice the stellar world of all the mind is capable of, seems the only way to survive. As if you can only have a life worth living by giving up all that makes life worth living.

Drugs, therapy, and a careful routine create a comfort zone in which you can stay reasonable, be predictable, and pay the bills on time. I’ve chosen this, with zeal, as it has enabled me to have a happy marriage and promising daughter. Yet I fear the self-focused, comfortable man I’ve become may sometimes cause them pain. With friends close and family consistent, my life is full of love. Yet I’ve lost a bit of the music that carried me into a mystical, more enlightening though less dependable world. It’s a sacrifice I’m about to test.

I’m spiritual enough to understand the full power of symbolism. These symbols don’t have to be big and earth moving. In our small lives they usually aren’t. So they’re easy to miss until they’re gone, and our life is routine, and we create nothing, and we’re old. At such a point we may still feel a bit of the old religion, a bit of something we once believed in, but our faith is gone.

For me the symbols are very small. They’re notes on a staff. I studied classical guitar for years, sometimes practiced two hours a day. But as I became more serious about meditation I played less and less. As my focus intensified I could suddenly only do one thing at a time, then eventually, one thing only. This is the great failure of Zen practice. Everything is so carefully experienced in the present moment, everything is so minutely observed, that, misunderstood and misapplied, Zen mediation can lead you into a life where nothing happens. A life of inquisition, definitely. A life of comfort, maybe. A life of self-absorption bordering on stagnation, absolutely. My guitar went into its case and never came out.

On the plus side meditation helped me manage bipolar disorder. But practicing a musical instrument is a sort of meditation, too. And a source of communication, which sitting focused on the breath certainly is not. Meditation, especially when devoid of any religious foundation, can be completely self-absorbing and even selfish. Music opens us, instead of closing doors and keeping us in a space that may be comfortable but restrictive. Music, practiced assiduously, is never boring. But on the cushion, careful introspection leads to the conclusion that we mostly are boring. Most of our lives are boring. We may have even convinced ourselves that, managed so well, even bipolar disorder is boring. The overwhelming failure and defeat we experience when the disease rises up and knocks us down again all too often forces us deeper into a comfort zone, further away from what most would call living.

Now I know, at 62, possibilities of earth-shattering work are likely behind me. But I also sense this comfort zone I’m settling into is responsible for my terror of growing old, my unreasonable fear of dying, and, quite likely, the intransigence of this episode that has entered its sixth month. So I’m going to take some appropriate, small steps out of my comfort zone. I’m going to play again.

A friend has offered to teach me mandolin, which I’ve long wanted to take up. I know how much learning to sight-read, and how much executing a new fingering can drive you into new worlds. So there I’ll go. It may not sound like much, but as I practice scales and callouses form on my fingertips I will not be comfortable. I will be more alive.